The Office of Censorship recently hosted its first of its kind Music Forum Workshop themed, "Respect and Decency in PNG Music," aimed at bringing together music artists, recording companies and the public to deliberate on the proposed General Guidelines for the classification of song lyrics by local musicians in Papua New Guinea (PNG). According to Chief Censor, Jim Abani, the National Censorship Policy II aspires to protect, promote and uphold moral and ethical values of society. The Office of Censorship is pursuing this by ensuring that the type of information content disseminated through films and publications including mass media, are descent and appropriate for public consumption. As music is an integral part of people’s social and cultural lives, it is the way the artists express themselves in a form and it is a form of art that defines who and what we are. They express their views, ideas by writing songs. However, with the content of music changing over time due to the advancement of technology evolving and many western influences, different styles of music are being created and this has also played a negative part in the music industry. With that, Abani stated that some songs are considered inappropriate nowadays for general consumption. “The Office of Censorship have received numerous calls and complaints regarding the content of the song that young artists of today have sung.” “As a government agency, we are responsible for the content in many forms either motion, written, pictorial or sound we have responsibility to ensure that the content is appropriate and suitable for public consumption by the people of Papua New Guinea.” Therefore, the office hosted this forum to gauge views from everyone who play a part in the industry. “This forum is for us to engage with artists to get what we want and hear from them so that we develop a good guideline to help them." "We want to hear from our songwriters, studio owners, composers, music artists and tell us what they want, and we return tell them what the government wants as well.” Furthermore, the forum also aimed to create awareness on music ethics by encouraging production of respectful and descent song lyrics and videos by the music artists. In-line with the Vision 2050, the Office of Censorship proposed guidelines is intended to regulate the production, sale and promotion of gender discriminatory songs, profane and sexually explicit lyrics, images and videos. These guidelines are fundamental for the spiritual cultural and social development of the country. Most importantly, the Office of Censorship is not intending to destroy the local talents, and creativity, but then again it is not prepared to stand and watch the moral values and Christian principles of the country deteriorate for the money and the benefit of a few people. In terms of the general guidelines for classification of song lyrics and music videos, the Censorship has made mention of pointers offensive in songs such as explicit languages, sexual themes, violence, use of drugs and alcohol, blasphemy, sedition and hate speech.